


as i shall weep for mine

by livhasnolife



Series: home, and homesickness, and home again [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, M/M, Pining, Platonic Allurance, dear hell there’s a lot of pining, except not really because i plan on writing more, i have no idea where this happens in canon and honestly i don’t care enough to place it, i’m so glad that tag already existed omg, lance cries a lot i’m sorry it’s the projection(tm), literally fuck canon, this isn’t actually the end i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-12-22 19:51:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21082169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livhasnolife/pseuds/livhasnolife
Summary: Keith leaves and takes the air from Lance’s lungs with him– takes his whole heart, goes to the one place Lance is not able to follow like he always has and Lance is left reaching. There is a gap somewhere in his chest, palpable, shaped like a red paladin or a blue lion or a family – it’s hard to tell the difference these days, but regardless, Lancemisses.or: grieving.





	as i shall weep for mine

_ **i.** _

Lance has nightmares about Keith.

They are dark and cold and wet, like the thick of a storm, and he can hear Keith but he can’t see him. He is always searching, heart rabbiting in his chest, shaking so hard he feels as if an earthquake is alive within him. Keith sounds pained. There is something grotesquely slick on his hands and he can’t make out if it’s red or black, blood or mudwater, and it scares him.

Some nights, his family will be thrown in the mix— his _families_, really. Nightmares are so much worse when there is so much to work with.

Every time, Keith’s voice gets louder and louder and Lance will reach for him, hands outstretched and hopeful, but nothing will be there, and Lance will fall and wake up feeling as if he is still falling.

-

Lance takes to exploring the castle ship at night. It’s not like sleeping will give him the slightest bit of rest, so he might as well put the time to use. Put himself to use. All that he’s ever been good for— leaving breadcrumbs and snippets of himself, worming himself into places he doesn’t belong, giving himself wholly to things that will inarguably end up being a waste of time. 

The castle ship almost feels alive at night - thrumming a pulse of a thousand Altean deities. Lance tries not to think about it, really, he doesn’t mean to spook himself, but he can’t stop his mind from wondering about how many people met their fate in this castle thousands of years back. He is traveling in the footsteps of ghosts. 

Sometimes, in the overwhelming quiet, late at night, it feels like maybe he’s a ghost himself.

In his findings, he realizes how little of the castleship they’ve really used. He finds things that have never even been mentioned in his searches.

It feels as if the halls lead him, most times. He’ll wander and be drawn, baited and hooked, to somewhere he needed. A library, a room with a long window seat looking out to the endless abyss of space, an unused bedroom; a garden. He catalogues them all in his mind, can find them again if he wants, but never really has to because the castle will lead him there itself.

The garden is probably his favorite. He grew up on a farm, after all, and while it’s nothing like his mother’s back in Cuba—

(it is far too purple, too soft and lush and windy and alien) 

—it reminds him a little of home. He never wants to own the farm himself, but some things from a life like that— a life of wild child and honeysuckle bud and early morning dew as the moon settles in its bed, a life as the friend of every animal, big and small and big again— never really fully leave you. 

When Lance closes his eyes, he can still feel the mud. The blood. The lightning.

He doesn’t sleep.

-

These aren’t the first nightmares he’s ever had, he reminds himself. He can recall times, sleep-eyed and dazed, waking up, scream caught around his tongue with his mother rushing in.

He has no mother now. His heart pangs with loss. He has lost so much.

He feels as if he no longer has a tongue to scream with.

His mother used to take him stargazing when he first had nightmares. He’d curl up on her lap, and she’d grab his hand and point out constellations, trace them on his back (leo was his favorite, of course, of course it was) until he would finally drift off into a happy slumber. 

When he got too old to inhabit the space on his mother’s lap, she stuck a hundred and two stars on his ceiling so he could map his own constellations.

He started to want to be up there. He looked up, so hopeful, and raised his hands to the stars, the moon.

Funny how, now with far more than a hundred and two of the real deal, all he wants is the person who had hung his own stars in the sky.

His mom had wanted to give him the world, space— everything. She wanted to give every single one of them that and she worked hard and never got anything for herself and now— now she’s a child short, somewhere, and Lance just hopes she’s okay.

Lance would give her every single fucking star if he could, place them in her palm one by one, if it meant never having to go to space again.

-

If anyone notices the lack of spring in Lance’s step, the lack of light in his eyes, the bags under them, they say nothing. Lance knows that everyone is tired nowadays. They are all wound tight like traps ready to be sprung, jaws ready to hold on with everything they have. It’s not their fault.

The chair to his left remains empty.

-

When the castle leads him to the library a couple nights later, it looks as if it’s been untouched for a long time. Lance is pleased to find that bookshelves seem to be a universal invention. He meanders through the aisles for a while before a cover catches his eye, red and silver gleaming. He pulls it out and reads the cover, decides it’s interesting enough, and finds a couch to settle on before he opens it.

He skims the first ten or so pages when he comes across the first dog-eared page and his nose wrinkles by instinct. He hurries to smooth down the page again. 

He reads for another ten pages before deciding to return sometime in the future because he’s getting sleepy and he doesn’t appreciate that with his current situation, thank you very much. He leaves the book on the couch.

-

Sometimes he still expects Blue to prod gently at his subconscious, the way she would, gentle as the ocean lapping the shore. She always felt like home, like beach, like a cool breeze on a hot day. Mother and seaspray and olive oil.

There is a real wound where his bond with Blue should be. It is gnarly and pained and unable to be treated but he feels it in the space next to his heart, twined in his ribs. It tangibly, palpably feels as if something is missing. 

Blue was his. She chose him first, believed him worthy for whatever reason. She was the one thing he felt like he could stake a claim on. No matter what happened in the crazy topsy turvy world of Voltron, he would always have Blue. It was her and him against the world.

However, if there’s one thing Lance knows, it’s that the thing people do best is abandon. Keith did, Blue did, even Lance did himself to his own family.

Space is so empty, so cold, like the bed in his room.

-

Lance loses his friends in a way that should feel natural. It looks natural, from an outsider’s view, it looks like ice melting before spring, it looks like an eclipse, a comet’s orbit, the moon waxing and waning, like I guess we just grew apart, mama.

He misses having a best friend.

He doesn’t watch them, seventh wheel, unnecessary, and doesn’t imagine Keith coming back. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t miss everything he once had.

And above all else, he does not pretend, pathetically, that there is hope.

-

“How do Alteans save their place in books?” 

Coran lifts his head, pauses wiping down the counter. “We use a blamfezer, of course! Why the sudden curiosity, my boy?”

“A.. blamfezer?” Lance asks, not just a little lost.

“Ah, I assume that’s not a common thing for both our planets, then,” he inquires. Lance nods. Coran pulls a rectangular sheet of.. plastic?? from his pocket. “This is a blamfezer. It’s a thin grumbellium seal of sorts that safely adheres to the page to secure your spot in a book. You can have one if you’d like!”

“...Sure,” Lance accepts, shrugging, “why not.”

“While I never mind talking about the domestic contraptions of Altean technology, I do wonder why you ask such a thing, Lance.”

He’s silent for a moment, but Coran is one of the only people who actually takes Lance seriously on his whole ship, and he looks at him with an open face and his eyes are genuinely intrigued. “...Would an Altean ever fold the corner of a page to save their spot?”

“How positively barbaric!” Coran shrieks, looking appalled, “Gods no. We are better than that, Number 3.”

“Okay, thanks Coran, my man,” he says, before giving him a salute and starting towards the door.

“Lance,” Coran calls. Lance stops, turns, raises an eyebrow. “You know I’m here if you ever need anything at all, right?”

Lance hadn’t known that. He suppresses the urge to do something embarrassing like cry or hug Coran. “I know. I’ll come to you if I ever need, promise.” He smiles. Coran smiles back. He leaves the room.

It feels a little less quiet in the halls that day.

-

If Lance is ocean, coral and tide, Keith is moon, isolated and beautiful, always out of reach. Always so far ahead of Lance, impossible to touch. Lance has always tried to stand out to him and he has failed again and again. 

Lance will never not reach though, will never not knock, because he never learns his lesson. It’s who he is— he worms himself into places he doesn’t belong, gives himself wholly to things that will inarguably end up being a waste of time. 

(although keith, unbeknownst to him, maybe, has never been a waste of time to lance. the thought of even saying such makes him sick.)

Iverson had looked him dead in the eyes and said “don’t follow in his footsteps” and Lance had seen Keith and well. It is a natural force, hooked and baited, Lance is drawn to him. 

He has always been ocean, has always followed the moon, since just a child, since sitting on the sand with his mother and reaching— and presumably, he will continue to do so until the end of time or there is a place he cannot follow.

The marmora is the end of the world, purple and abysmal, a place where first loves go to get lost. It is somewhere Lance cannot follow. It took Keith’s mother before him and now it has taken its rightful claim, the whole Kogane family. 

Keith is searching, just like Pidge, just like Lance’s family back home, for his lost family. Lance can understand that. Keith is looking for home.

It’s just a shame that Keith is home in a person to him.

He tries to grasp him, hands outstretched and hopeful, begs him to come home, and is left with arms full of nothing.

-

The castle won’t lead him back to the library, no matter how much he focuses for it, no matter how long he wanders the halls, no matter if he takes the right path. 

Night after night, he tries to get there, and night after night it leads him to the observation deck.

_Not yet_, it seems to say.

On the fifth night, Lance breaks down, and yells, “IF NOT YET, THEN WHEN?”

Predictably, he gets no answer but the haunting echo of ‘_WHEN_’.

_’when’_

-

Lance may feel left behind, but like his farm upbringing, being the baby of the family but the main uncle, some things aren’t so easily forgotten. His compassion is one.

Pidge falls asleep in front of her computer and he is quick to carry her to bed. Allura’s hair is a mess and he is quick to ask to braid it. Hunk is overwhelmed by dishes so Lance does them before he can get a word in edgewise. 

Hunk is most definitely the leg of Voltron, their support system, but Lance still once helped balance this family. He may be useless now but he wasn’t always and just because he feels so _hurt_ doesn’t mean he’s not going to try his damnedest to help his fucking family.

-

Eventually he gives in. He hopes for the library but when he’s led to the observation deck he does not protest. The castleship has known what to do so far, he might as well trust it now. He settles himself in, pulls up solar system B-2847 and relaxes at the familiarity.

-

Shiro, his role model, their leader, the person he acts as right hand man to, snaps at him, scrutinizes him, acts as though he does not know what he is talking about.

Shiro, gracious and kind, democratic, becomes tyrannical and resistant to feedback.

Lance starts to fear him. He _hates_ that he does and it feels like metal against bone, tastes like metal in his mouth, feels like blood in his hands and Lance just wants to go home, wants to wash himself off in the rain, wants to cry because his eyes sting and burn. He smolders, feels like he is on fire, and thinks of the only magma boy he knows. The only boy who could be set on fire and live. Shiro would have listened to Keith.

He knows Shiro is smart. He knows Shiro is kind. But Shiro feels so far away right now. He pegs it on him being through so much awful shit and maybe missing home a bit too, maybe missing his brother, because Lance feels that from his head to his toes. He trusts Shiro so he turns a blind eye and the fear festers.

(ultimately, he will regret this.) 

-

The observation deck becomes a place of grieving. 

Lance sits, surrounded by blankets, and watches Earth, Jupiter; Saturn until his eyelids become too heavy to do such. It’s the first time he doesn’t have the nightmare in months, but somehow, when he wakes up, he feels guilty.

Lance decides, if he ever gets out of this mess alive, when all is said and done, he’s going to get a tattoo of the coordinates of his home on Earth. 

(not like they aren’t already tattooed into his mind and heart, anyway.)

-

When Red finally starts to get into his head, it’s not gentle or wave-like, which really should be expected. Instead, Red feeds on passion. When she comes to mind, it is because he is feeling so _much_ and she recognizes that and encourages him to release it into something. She amplifies his energy, lights a flame under it, supports him when he doesn’t even know how to support himself. She is fierce and fire and different but now that she’s opened up (after so long, it took her so long) Lance is eating it up.

He finds another home in Red’s cockpit but he can’t help but feel as if he is in someone else’s space; wearing a jacket a size too small. Red rumbles as if she knows this too.

Somehow she sees his lionheart, his past of scraped knees and windswept hair, smile like the crescent moon the coyotes could howl too, dreams of being a pilot and the love of the thrill, the adrenaline, of _life_ in such an unalloyed form, and deems him worthy of fire. She doesn’t talk, none of them do, really, but in his head, whenever she addresses him, it feels more _Leandro_ than _Lance_. 

They talk about Keith, and Lance wonders if maybe one of the reasons he feels at home in her belly is because she is so _Keith_, so home away from home, so reckless abandon, so wild hair, shoot first ask questions later type. They both miss him so incredibly dearly. She feels the mourn of a mother and he feels the mourning of something else entirely.

-

He has the nightmare again, but this time things are clearer. He can make out a floor of some sort, the fog, he can see his hands covered in something dark and when Keith calls it sounds so real and so close and Lance–

It comes in snatches, like it always does. Lance can feel the moisture in the air, knows the storm, more feels than sees the flashes of lightning through the gloom. He’s scared. It’s a foreign feeling around something so entirely _water_. Keith calls his name, hoarse and pressured, and he stumbles through the mud. 

He finds Keith in a crevice, a mess of dark hair and fighter’s spirit and covered in mud and blood and he kneels, reaches for Keith and then Keith is reaching back and-

He wakes up in Red’s cockpit, jarringly, with a terrible crick in his neck.

The clock reads 0300 vargas. Red presses something warm in his head, plausibly as a means of calming him down, but he sighs and prepares for another night of wandering; of ghosthood.

-

The castle still leads him only to the observation deck, but tonight, Lance thinks that that’s probably for the best.

-

On their next call with the Blade, he can’t help but stare at Keith.

_do you feel it too? do you miss us? have you been sleeping alright? i haven’t. i miss you. i feel like i’ve lost everything._

He says nothing the entire meeting in fear that these thoughts will fall from his mouth like a thorny vine.

-

It’s around 0130 when Allura enters the observation deck and finds Lance there. He notices her immediately, it feels as if he always does, a connection to something deeper that he has a hunch she probably doesn’t feel as well. 

“One of those nights, I assume?” she asks, gently. She makes no move to sit. Lance does not blame her.

He simply shrugs, jacket wrinkling around the edges. He hears her sigh and pad out of the room. It’s probably for the better, but he can’t help but feel sad. He has no one here. 

Lance McClain is fully alone in space.

Allura walks back into the room with two cups of alien tea, and takes a seat beside him. She hands him a mug, the tea is a soft teal and smells a little bit like bleach but not quite. He looks up at her, shocked, and she smiles at him and looks at the solar system displayed in front of her. Lance’s hands and heart warm. It feels like he was given a gift. An olive branch from the universe. 

-

“You know, Lance,” she says, when they both decide its far passed time to part ways and get some sleep, “you aren’t half bad.”

Lance wonders if he is glowing. Shining like the Sun, or the moon, or something far away from space– something better. “Thanks, princess,” he replies, usual smirk returning, “you aren’t entirely insufferable yourself.”

She scoffs and rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “Goodnight, Lance.”

And then she’s gone, but the warmth lingers.

-

The next night, he makes it back to the library.

It is empty, dusty, the same as it had been. Untouched. It feels like something’s missing. It feels _lonely_. Like someone who lost friends and family in one fell swoop, someone spending a year in solitude in space, or a desert, the two blur together. Does it really matter?

The book is there, right where he left it, and nothing has changed. 

Lance is standing still.

-

He makes sure to take the book this time. He’s not letting go again.

It’s only when he’s five chapters in that he finds out it’s a romance. The page after that is covered in scrawling lines of surprisingly neat handwriting belonging to a certain red- black- ex paladin. Lance, slowly, closes the book. It feels a little too much.

-

“I just miss it _so much_, Allura, and I know it’s stupid because we’re all out here fighting to protect what we love and I can’t get my head out of my ass long enough to think about the lives outside of me, but I miss home. I just feel so- so _lost_ sometimes.” Like he is still reaching. No matter what Lance is always reaching. He genuinely feels wounded. “I feel like I’ve lost everything.”

Allura delicately places a hand on his shoulder, handles him with care the same way Ro used to, “Lance,” she says, voice soft and lilting. “I think we all know that feeling. Especially me. You are not alone in this.”

His heart swells like the tide at evening, washing away all the hurt, letting him feel safe.

-

The nightmare shifts in a way that feels like missing a step on the stairs.

Lance wakes up in his dream to find himself on a beach so familiar it fills his lungs with equal parts homesickness and sea salt air. It is late, a quiet time, a lonely time, bewitching and weeping. He feels the white sand beneath his fingertips and wonders if he could get away with never waking up.

Keith calls his name though, and Lance startles. He feels tricked, caged- fully lulled into a false sense of security. Panic fills him and the ocean waves start to sound more like screams and Keith’s voice is coming oceanside. Lance walks straight into the sea and underwater, he can still hear Keith loud and clear, so close. He’s holding his breath, swimming deeper and deeper. He cannot find Keith. The water is dark and red and terrifying, like blood, like Red’s cockpit, like love, and suddenly Lance can’t hold his breath any longer but he is not leaving Keith down here, _dammit_, not again. 

He takes a breath, drowns dark and alone in a watery grave, without saving Keith, without ever saving anyone.

-

Logically, when Lance makes it back to the library, he knows he won’t find Keith there. Logically. But Lance’s strong suit has always been his lion heart, logic second, even if his logic and planning are pretty up to par. Lance is a fool and he wanted to believe, for a while, that maybe when he entered the library again he’d find a familiar set of dark eyes and red knuckles, lounging in the old chair near the entrance, nose stuck in a book. He is not so lucky.

He reads more. It feels a little bit like Keith is there with him, giving him his commentary, rather than just reading his handwriting on the page. 

He’s surprised to find Keith a hopeless romantic, to find a boy with so many walls growing a garden behind them. He’s surprised, but his stomach feels right. His lungs feel filled with something fizzling and thick, giddy and fluttery but as languid as clover honey.

-

“Do you miss Earth?” Lance had asked once, blanket pulled up to his ears in the kitchen, far too late to be night, really, but somewhere before morning.

Keith, spilled upon the chair across from him, far too important to be a simple acquaintance, really, but somewhere before something more, had hummed consideringly; tapped his chin once. He genuinely took Lance’s thoughts into account, listened to what he had to say, considered, and it’s all Lance misses and missed back then too. “No, I don’t think I do,” he answered honestly, meeting Lance’s eyes.

-

“Are you aware how much Blue misses you?” Allura asks, draped in the olive green of his jacket. (she had been cold, and what was lance to do? let her freeze? nuh-uh)

“She does?” The words slip from his mouth mangled, insecure and shocked and everything Lance doesn’t want to show people about himself. All the parts Lance hides away.

Allura doesn’t comment on it, but her eyes are keen and knowing when he next meets them. “Dreadfully so. It’s always _Lance_ this, and _Lance_ that.” She’s smiling now, a delicate thing. The twisting in Lance’s heart, both from Allura’s smile and her words, feels awfully unfair.

“Tell her to stop blathering next time, it’s rude,” he says, forcing himself to clear the lump in his throat and approach with humor.

“I quite enjoy her stories, actually,” Allura says, and it’s so sweet that Lance kind of wants to die.

They sit in silence for a moment, before Lance says, quietly, “Thank you.”

Allura just pats his knee. “Of course.”

-

The nightmare becomes a cave, a foreign planet, a galra base, and every time he can’t reach Keith. He’s not fast enough, or strong enough. He’s not good enough. He cannot catch up to Keith.

He’s never been able to, really.

-

He picks up the book and he _aches_ at the handwriting. It feels so astonishingly familiar, like Keith is _there_, pointing everything out to Lance or maybe just mumbling his thoughts as he reads, and Lance can so vividly remember him across the lounge, curled up with a book opened. He misses him so much it feels almost unbearable, and he doesn’t know if seeing Keith’s notes makes it better or worse.

He wants to respond. He wants to talk to Keith. 

It feels like his chest is falling apart piece by piece.

He picks up a blue pen from his nightstand.

-

Sometimes, when he was sad back home, Rachel would tell everyone and try to get them all to do something for him, whether it be goading their mom into making his favorite food or just setting up a game night for all of them. It always annoyed him at first, the way she would spill his guts for him, but it always ended up being exactly what he needed.

Now, millions of miles away, surrounded by some of the universe’s greatest wonders, all he really wants is people who care enough to notice he’s struggling, all he really wants is to play a board game with his family, all he really wants is Rachel, with her freckles and long poofy hair and crooked smile and the way she could read his mind like no other.

-

The observation room is still cold, and yet Allura’s smile is warm enough that he almost doesn’t feel it.

When he walks back to his room every night though, the cold clings to him, seeps back into his bones like an old friend. His thoughts go back to being a whirlwind of ice that’s so cold it burns and all he can do is wait out the storm and hope he survives.

-

Lance sees Keith in every planet they visit, literally or figuratively. He sees Keith passing through the crowd but when he blinks, it’s just someone similar, or he finds a particularly pretty rock and wonders if Keith would like it, or sees something slightly similar to blueberries and wonders if he could bug Keith enough for him to down them all on a dare. He sees a pretty view and thinks, wow, this would be better with Keith. A cool knife. Something resembling a hippo. Friendship bracelets. A game they could play. 

Sometimes he turns, says, “Oh my gosh, look, Ke—” and chokes, the words making a grave in his mouth, and it feels like his heart has been thrown down on the floor.

(oh my gosh, look, keith! or otherwise known as _please pay attention to me, focus on me, listen to me, because i am always focusing listening paying attention to you, i love your company, i can’t bear the thought of you not looking at me so i will do anything, i will take any scrap i can get, i will tease you until your temper spikes because i just want you to see me_)

Needless to say, because it is as obvious as homesickness always seems to be, he misses Keith.

-

And whenever they fail missions, because sometimes, they do. It’s statistically impossible for them not to. But whenever they fail, and they can’t save someone, Lance’s first thought is Keith. Because, really, 

_ what if that had been Keith? _

Or his family? Or Pidge, Allura, Hunk, Shiro or Coran? What if they had died because someone wasn’t good enough to save them?

Because _Lance_ wasn’t good enough to save them? 

-

“Do you think the castle has a consciousness?” he asks her one night, somewhere around Veronica’s birthday on Earth according to Pidge’s modified calendars, all too vulnerable and trying to distract himself.

She looks at him kind of funny. “Not really,” she says, “I suppose I’ve never thought about it. Seems outlandish, but so does everything else, so perhaps it’s possible. Altean magic draws greatly from life’s rules so that could be a contributor.” It’s not unkind, and Lance is used to being called silly. They sit for a moment before Allura continues, “You may just be tired, Lance. Get some rest, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.” And then with a pat on the shoulder, she’s gone.

He wants to tell Keith. Keith, boy with a love of conspiracies, a love of almost every outlandish idea Lance has had, once they really got to know each other. Once they warmed up to each other.

It’s Lance’s craving for that warmth that brings him back to blue ink. He writes Keith a letter on paper he had bought months ago, the moment Keith said he was going to leave, specifically _for_ writing to Keith, and never touched again.

And then another, and another, until they fill up an entire velvety alien box in his closet.

_Love letters_, he realizes, before wiping the thought from his mind and forcing himself to sleep. Allura was right. He really is tired. 

-

The dream shifts, turns a little lopsided, a note that sounds familiar but doesn’t quite hit right in its new key.

_This isn’t right_, Lance immediately notes, because he is not alone.

It is dark and slick and something has crusted over on Lance’s cheek. He is crouched and he can’t see anything aside the glow of paladin armor, but it smells like metal and he can hear someone breathing.

It’s warm.

“Keith?” Lance croaks, surprised at the rusty hinge that is his voice - not at what it sounds like, but that it _sounds_ at all.

An affirmative mumble comes from somewhere beside Lance and, as dumb as it is, he immediately chokes back a sob. He stumbles through the dark until he feels Keith,_Keith_, “Keith,” he whispers, watery and raw. He can make out his face, but just barely. He places his hand on the side of Keith’s face.

But then the ground tips, and Keith has flipped them, not gentle or loving or passionate, and the cold dark ground envelops Lance’s sides.

He is laying still.

Keith gets up. “Stop fucking following me. I don’t need your help. I don’t need you. You can’t keep up,” he says, quick to the point. Lance feels it. He _feels_ it. The words are sharp enough to stab their way in between his ribs, and he keeps them there, as he sinks further and further into the ground.

-

He wakes up and nothing is right. There is sharp in his throat and his eyes and he can feel the ground cold in his limbs. Can feel the wet on his cheeks. Can feel everything in the worst of ways, feels the _alone_ the most real of all.

He stumbles into the corridor, wipes his tears, and waits for the castle to lead him. Anything that’s not still. Anything that’s not cold.

He finds himself in a dining hall, well lit but easy on the eyes and warm. He doesn’t remember going back to his room, doesn’t really remember anything, but he wakes up in bed.

-

Abuela loved proverbs.

Lance doesn’t remember much about her from before she died - not firsthand at least; he knows all the wild, important stories from his mother and siblings, but being the youngest, he was the one with the least real time with her. He remembers some unimportant, scattered things like how she smelled like the sun and honey, or how she would firmly hold him to her chest and pat his head when he did something goofy.

He remembers one instance, an encounter with the woman, in particular.

His mom and dad had still been out at work when he had returned from school that day, and he entered crying, because he hadn’t gotten the lead role he’d wanted in the first grade play, but the _supporting_ role, and the world was Ending. This is the worst thing that could have happened to Lance.

“Leandro,” she had said softly, patiently, the only one in his family who still refused to use a nickname, “Come here, child.” He did as he was told. “What’s wrong?”

He told her his woes, and she tsked and shook her head. “Now, that’s no good at all. Why don’t we make some cookies together and make everything better?” 

Easy as that, he was smiling again.

Later, cookies devoured and Lance sprawled out on the wood floor contentedly, Abuela had commented, “See, Leandro? You can act well enough to land a supporting role, and you can bake cookies, and help out your mama so well. You have a lot going for you.”

Aprendiz de todo y maestro de nada, she says, roughly jack of all trades, master of none, and it sticks, fits like all of the pairs of socks she would make him.

It stays.

-

The tour starts.

Things shift dizzyingly, a familiar strewn note, his childhood beach, a new lion, a _loss_.

Allura takes the chair to his left.

-

Shiro calls out to him, and it goes right over Lance’s head. Lance, who has been calling out into the void for _someone_ for what feels like decades, can’t even hear Shiro correctly. He can’t save anyone.

Shiro is scared. Shiro is so strong and seeing him so unsure scares Lance, too, but he needs to be a strong right hand man so he picks himself up and tries not to be afraid. Keith wouldn’t be, not when it came to Shiro.

-

“You know, buddy,” Hunk says, one day, out of earshot from everyone else as they rarely are these days, “I think you might actually have a shot with the princess now.”

And maybe when Lance was still 17 and bright-eyed he would’ve jumped for joy. But instead all he feels is kind of hollow and kind of sad.

But he looks to where Allura is laughing with her mice and thinks, _Allura would be so easy to fall in love with_. Already IS so easy to fall in love with. This is something he’s known from day one, and yet,

(and yet, his heart whispers, you’re still hung up on the one who got away)

He quiets the noises. He’s so _tired_ of being hung up. 

“Maybe loverboy Lance isn’t so hopeless after all, huh?” he responds.

“Yeah,” Hunk says, nudging his ribs affectionately. “You should ask her out.”

“Maybe,” Lance replies, and he doesn’t know how he feels to find that he means it.

-

He finishes the book on a quiet night. Keith is everywhere, all over, and it _hurts_. It _hurts_, but in a tender way, like “dumbass, don’t ever do that again”, like “was worried i’d lose you there for a second, blue”, “pfft, whatever helps you sleep at night, lance”.

He cries and he cries and he cries and when he gets out of his bed he ends up at one of the gardens, tranquil fountain in the middle, and wonders how it’s possible for something to cry as much as him.

It’s obviously one of the older parts of the castle, cracked in some places and not even close to as sleek as the rest. It feels human— Earthy. Homey.

Both of the characters had almost died, but they’d pulled through with some true love mumbo jumbo and right now Lance thinks the happy ending almost hurts more, wedged sharp and cold between his ribs. He can’t stop thinking about just how unrealistic it is. How happy they seemed. That that was the type of book Keith would read.

Everything is so hot and cold and Lance is sad.

-

The more they talk, the more Lance loves Allura like a best friend, a partner, someone he would gladly have by his side forever.

(platonically, he knows this. he’s not dumb. just stubborn and unable to move on so maybe he should force himself to instead.)

-

“You always say I’m the heart, Lance,” Allura says, one night, the hologram of Altea casting blue light across her face. She is still mourning, but only in the dead of night when vulnerability won’t kill her. Her and Coran are constantly going and going and going despite losing an entire world. Lance can’t even imagine how that must feel. He already feels such a tangible sense of grief being away from home; being dead to the world. She turns to face him. “But I think we both know that that’s only the half of it. You are capable of so much more than you think.”

Her voice is soft, and for a tiny moment, Lance feels whole and warm again.

-

Lance dies, electricity crackling across his skin, blood or mud or something thick holding back his tongue from screaming and even in the pain he feels.. almost at peace for a moment and then hates himself for it when he’s brought back. He didn’t see anything when dying, he just, didn’t exist for a moment and that fucking terrifies him. The fact that he didn’t mind terrifies him. 

He starts to have nightmares about the lightning, and the nothing that followed it. Of dying without ever seeing his family again. Of ghosthood. Maybe he’s already dead. He is in the hearts of those that matter already anyway.

Allura keeps saving him. Lance doesn’t know what to do with it.

-

_do you miss us?_

He thinks, from the garden. He thinks, cleaning with Coran. He thinks, running his fingers over the spines of the books in the libraries. He thinks, feet dipped into the upside down pool.

_do you miss us?_

He thinks, from inside Red. He thinks, from his place on the counter. He thinks, from the lounge. He thinks, from his room. He thinks, in the pages and pages of letters.

(_because i’ve never stopped missing you_.)

**Author's Note:**

> some disclaimers:  
\- this part took me like a year to develop, so while i do intend on writing two more parts (and i already have a pretty solid outline for both!! :D) it will take me a while, especially between school and all my extra curriculars. please be patient with me <3  
\- uhhh i don’t remember anything abt canon timeline and i’m really just going off the canon that exists in my own head so??? don’t worry ab it too much  
\- as always, i couldn’t do this without ao3 user ayushi_writes, she encourages me to keep writing and keep breathing and is always there to calm me down or read through my works. please check out her stuff because she’s an amazing writer and person  
\- thanks for reading! i love feedback if you’d like to leave some
> 
> if you wanna talk to me i’m most available on my twitter, wlwadora :)


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